Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!strath-cs!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!kh
From: kh@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Kevin Hammond)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: comp.lang.functional
Message-ID: <4626@vanuata.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 23 Feb 90 09:59:33 GMT
References: <1619@husc6.harvard.edu> <1797@skye.ed.ac.uk> <5144@brazos.Rice.edu> <1816@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: kh@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Kevin Hammond)
Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland
Lines: 28

In article <1816@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In article <5144@brazos.Rice.edu> dorai@helma.rice.edu (Dorai Sitaram) writes:
> >i) A language which has higher-order functions;
> >ii) Ditto, but which very definitely eschews "assignment."
>
>However, I don't think definition (i) is correct.  A (wimpy)
>functional language might not have higher-order functions.  Functional
>languages are applicative languages, ie ones w/o side-effects (think
>of mathematical functions).

In mathematics, a functional is  a higher-order function.  I don't see
how  a  language wo HOFs  can really be described  as functional!  But
that's "just" terminology.

I would read  this group    if it   concerned itself primarily    with
non-imperative features (or the  modelling of "imperative" features in
a non-imperative fashion).   There are  several functional programmers
here who would take a similar stance, I'm sure (there are 20-30 people
here working on research in pure functional programming).

Personally,  I  think  it  would be a   good  thing  to get  the  pure
functional programmers talking to the SMLers, Schemers etc.

Kevin

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